Pop Culture: To boldly go where no one has gone before, again

Dennis Volkert

Saturday

May 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMMay 31, 2008 at 5:59 AM

The Phoenix Lander touched down last weekend. “Great news!” I said. “No longer will the desert-like landscape of south-central Arizona go unexplored.” I found out it’s actually the Phoenix Mars Lander. Mars, as in the planet. “Phoenix” is just the name of the contraption.

I found out it’s actually the Phoenix Mars Lander. Mars, as in the planet. “Phoenix” is just the name of the contraption.

I had wondered what all the hoo-hah was about.

A couple of months ago, I had incorrectly assumed the “Phoenix Lander” was a nickname for the Shaquille O’Neal trade.

Now that we know its true meaning and solar systemic location, the intense research begins. The Lander’s first task is to take soil samples.

Unlike that lazy old dog, the Mars Rover, this new machine isn’t content to just skim the surface. Phoenix is burrowing deep under the crust, nearly 12 inches core-ward, to dredge up some ice.

People like to knock NASA for spending billions of dollars on these projects. “Want ice?” they ask. “Heck, there’s a bunch of ice up there in Ann-ardeeca.”

These are the same naysayers who believe Pluto never should’ve been called a planet in the first place; that playing golf on the moon was a waste of a good 3-stage rocket; and that Tom Hanks was too Hollywood for “Apollo 13.”

That’s all unfair, but scrutiny is as scrutiny does, and there’s no crying in astronomy. In the space program, every success begins with failure. You remember Hubble, and its motto, “That’s one large space telescope for man, one giant wrongly-ground main mirror for mankind.”

But Hubble’s problem had a happy ending. Astronauts flew to the craft, fixed the telescope and sent it on its quest to focus on whatever it was it was supposed to see.

The Phoenix Lander hasn’t escaped the gravity of malfunctionism. Officials said a sheath around the trench-digging robotic arm didn’t unwrap all the way and was covering the arm’s elbow joint. The media immediately dubbed it the “The Starburst Wrapper Complex.”

But scientists who had a hand in the arm said it was only a minor inconvenience, nothing a little elbow grease wouldn’t fix.

Negatives aside, we’ve made so many advances since the early days (i.e., 1961). Through the miracle of flight, we’ve explored Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, Neptune’s cosmic insignificance.

I use “we” loosely. “We” really have never done much, except turn on the TV to bask in the moonglow.

When it comes to space, we really don’t know what’s up. Most of us wouldn’t know the Kuiper Belt from the Bible Belt. That’s because space exploration has ultimately spoiled us. The silent-film classic, “A Trip to the Moon” once inspired flights of fancy. It made people briefly forget about the McKinley assassination. A mere 66 years later, it was just an excuse for a David Bowie hit.

Science fiction writing suffered. The Jules Verne classic “From the Earth to the Moon” inspired flights of fancy and made people briefly forget about the Lincoln assassination. It is now in the Skylab heap of history.